mewithoutYou ... part of Christian rock's awkward squadLast night the Christian metallers were soundly spanked at dodgeball by the staff at the Christian rock club. I'm in Nashville - just down the road from the confederate flag-festooned knick-knack shops and the barbershop quartet conference (apparently the traditionalists and the modernists are at loggerheads - who knew?), where I'm on tour with the radical Christian rock band mewithoutYou.

The band are going to haul my militant atheist ass on a 10-day tour across the Bible Belt in their vegetable oil-fuelled 40-ft 1976 MC8 Charter bus.

In the hall adjacent to this room, hip-hoppers are body-popping. Outside in the parking lot, long-haired and wispily bearded young men in horn-rimmed no-sex-spex are battering songs out on electrified acoustic guitars for an audience of similarly bearded young men and the odd frizzy-haired woman.

Apart from the Apple Mac on the mixing desk, it could be 1975. I wonder what the original Jesus Freaks would make of it. In my bag I've got a kick-ass original copy of the Jesus People USA newspaper circa 1975, equal parts psychedelia and preaching, radicalism and tut-tutting about the wrongness of abortion. The radical Christian rocker's dilemma hasn't changed much in 33 years. Bigots to the right of them, sneering punks to the left, and underlying it all is the all but universal assumption that if it's Christian and it rocks it almost certainly sucks.

Apart from the literature in the cafe there's nothing to indicate this is a Christian venue. The dude who sells me a cup of coffee says last night they had a Christian metal fest. Afterwards they challenged the bands to dodgeball and thrashed then, six-nothing. He says bands are "checked out to make sure that they don't, like, just get up on stage and blaspheme everything", as has apparently happened a few times.

But that probably won't happen tonight - mewithoutYou are part of Christian rock's awkward squad. Singer Aaron Weiss, a gentle and passionate soul who has been described by fellow band members as "virtually homeless" and " a scumbag", due to his habit of rescuing food from supermarket dumpsters, doesn't fit the stereotype of the closeted, dogmatic Christbot. He has an aura about him that I probably shouldn't describe as Jesus-like, given that it'll embarrass him, and I've got to spend the next 10 days in close quarters. So let's say Joe Strummer-ish. He has Strummer's wide-open friendliness, which took the form of a hug and a tub of rescued dumpster-dive kumquats the first time we met. The kumquats were horribly sour, but this is not a parable and I don't think that's significant.

A word about those close quarters. They are not salubrious. There is a dog, Penny, who shares our space. The toilet ... isn't. It empties out on the road. So it's kinda like a mobile Glastonbury. Looks like I'm going to be poohing and peeing and washing and cleaning my teeth on an ad hoc basis. I really am a fish out of water. I hate Glastonbury. I hate sweating. I love my air conditioning and running water and 24-hour toilet access. Plus - and readers of a sensitive disposition might want to stick their fingers in their eyes here - I've just come off a serious year-long explosive diarrhoea jag, diagnosed recently as celiac disease. Which means I'm officially a messy shitter and a fussy eater. Not exactly the sort of chap you'd want to take up Everest, down the Amazon, or across the Bible Belt.

Oh hang on. Aaron's on stage making a witty, guileless and charming speech about forgiveness, and the Chuck Norris lookalike security dude has just asked me to show my wristband. I thought the woman in the "volunteer" T-shirt was looking at me funny. I can't blame her, I wouldn't want me hanging around young Christians either. Especially after what I did to her toilet.